463. In laying the scene in Flanders, Chaucer probably followed an original which is now lost. Andrew Borde, in his amusing Introduction of Knowledge, ch. viii, says:—'Flaunders is a plentyfull countre of fyshe & fleshe & wyld fowle. Ther shal a man be clenly serued at his table, & well ordred and vsed for meate & drynke & lodgyng. The countre is playn, & somwhat sandy. The people be gentyl, but the men be great drynkers; and many of the women be vertuous and wel dysposyd.' He describes the Fleming as saying—
'I am a Fleming, what for all that,
Although I wyll be dronken other whyles as a rat?
"Buttermouth Flemyng" men doth me call,' &c.
464. haunteden, followed after; cf. note to l. 547. The same expression occurs in The Tale of Beryn, a spurious (but not ill-told) addition to the Canterbury Tales:—
'Foly, I haunted it ever, ther myght no man me let'; l. 2319.
473. grisly, terrible, enough to make one shudder. It is exactly the right word. The mention of these oaths reminds us of the admission of my Uncle Toby in Sterne's Tristram Shandy, ch. xi, that 'our armies swore terribly in Flanders.'
474. to-tere, tear in pieces, dismember. Cf. to-rente in B. 3215; see note on p. 229. Chaucer elsewhere says—'For Cristes sake ne swereth nat so sinfully, in dismembringe of Crist, by soule, herte, bones, and body; for certes it semeth, that ye thinke that the cursede Iewes ne dismembred nat ynough the preciouse persone of Crist, but ye dismembre him more'; Persones Tale (De Ira), I. 591. And see ll. 629-659 below.
'And than Seint Johan seid—"These [who are thus tormented in
hell] ben thei that sweren bi Goddes membris, as bi his nayles and other his membris, and thei thus dismembrid God in horrible swerynge bi his limmes"'; Vision of Wm. Staunton (A. D. 1409), quoted in Wright's St. Patrick's Purgatory, p. 146. In the Plowman's Tale (Chaucer, ed. 1561, fol. xci) we have—